


will you still love me in the morning

by TalkingIsJustAWasteOfBreath



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: M/M, ash has a nightmare, eiji comforts him, i just need them to be fucking happy okay, some fun introspection on ash’s part, this anime hurt me heart a lot, this is deadass the first fic ive written in over a year lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-27 23:34:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16712128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TalkingIsJustAWasteOfBreath/pseuds/TalkingIsJustAWasteOfBreath
Summary: this is the first fic i written in a literal year and it feels. so good. i Love me some self indulgent writing. enjoy!!!





	will you still love me in the morning

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first fic i written in a literal year and it feels. so good. i Love me some self indulgent writing. enjoy!!!

_ Eiji, dead. Eiji, staring at him, a bullet hole clean in the middle of his forehead, oozing blood. Eiji, gasping for breath on an ally floor, a knife stuck into the center of his chest (shattering the sternum, slicing the heart), blood trickling from the delicate corner of his mouth. Eiji in his arms, eyes glazed, blood still pulsating from the shredded artery in his leg. Ash screams and screams and screams until it feels like his vocal cords might snap, but the pain still throbs and invades every part of his body, curdling his blood and squeezing at his heart and frying his synapses and-  _

 

Something in Ash finally breaks beyond repair and his eyes fly open, hands frozen mid-reach into the air and breath labored as he awakes from his nightmare. Dreams have never been particularly kind to Ash, but in the months after meeting Eiji, they’ve steadily gotten worse as Ash is forced to live out every anxiety and worry he’s ever had about Eiji being killed because of him every night when he goes to sleep. 

 

As he regains his senses, Ash looks wildly around the room for the real Eiji, to confirm that it really was just all a dream and Eiji isn’t dead somewhere. His heart freezes when he looks to the bed next to his, the bed Eiji usually slept on, and sees it empty,  _ and the floor is empty so he couldn’t have fallen off and be sleeping there and the door is shut so there’s no immediate possibility that someone took him unless- _

 

Ash’s thoughts are interrupted by a clumsy hand on his shoulder. He turns to see Eiji, hair mussed and concerned eyes still full of sleep sitting up in the bed next to him, his hand resting gently on his shoulder. Ash had forgotten that they’d taken to sleeping together over the last few weeks, a quite testament to the way their relationship had slowly crossed a line that had been drawn from the very first moment they had met. Instinctively Ash grasps at Eiji’s other hand and pulls in to him, studying it in the moonlight, trying to ensure that this Eiji is real. 

 

“Ash...are you okay?” Eiji’s voice is thick with sleep. Ash lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and drops Eiji’s hand, confident that he is back in reality. 

 

“Yes.” 

 

Eiji reaches forward and brushes a strand of hair away from Ash’s face. “You were screaming.”

 

Ash shivers from his touch. “I had a nightmare.”

 

“What kind of nightmare?”

 

Ash looks into Eiji’s tired, amber eyes. “A nightmare about you.”

 

Eiji’s hand pauses where it was lightly tracing the curve of Ash’s cheekbones. It is not the first time that Eiji has comforted him after a nightmare, but it is the first time that Ash has admitted to him what it was really about. The vulnerability hangs in the air between them for one, two, three seconds until Eiji gently cups Ash’s face in his hands and presses their foreheads together, breathing out a long, slow breath. The gesture is so careful and tender that Ash’s heart lurches with affection, and he presses a very soft kiss to the corner of Eiji’s jaw before he pulls Eiji to him and gently lays the both of them back down on the bed. Eiji tucks his head under Ash’s chin and Ash gently starts to twirl strands of his hair between his fingers. 

 

“Do you want to talk about it, Ash?”

 

Ash knows he’ll have to bear his wounded, bleeding heart to Eiji at some point, but Eiji simply knowing that he is the cause of the nightmares that plague Ash night after night after night is too much for Ash to handle right now. All he wants is to hold Eiji close and etch this moment into his mind forever, so in the future when he is once again trapped in the cold and dark embrace of his old life, he can look back on holding Eiji in his arms and remember what love, real, tender, requited love feels like, and why he kept living through all of this in the first place. 

 

“Not...not tonight, Eiji. Thank you, though.”

 

Ash feels Eiji smile against his neck and he closes his eyes, calming his heart rate so he can drift back into sleep again. 

 

Ash knows that this story does not have a happy ending. It can’t, not with the life he has lead and the things he have done, and he’d been at peace with that fact for a while now. Lying here with Eiji, though, Ash almost wishes that this could end okay, that he and Eiji could really and openly love each other without death harassing them at every corner, that this could have the storybook ending that humans having been wishing for their own lives for an eternity. 

 

It does not end up okay, in the end, but even then Ash is glad for moments like this, where loving Eiji is as uncomplicated as existing. They give a little meaning to the life he lived, and that matters more to Ash than anything else, in the end. 

**Author's Note:**

> if u wanna yell abt banana fish or other gay things my Twitter and tumblr are both @mysenpaiisdead


End file.
